Yes, you are about to read more Mickian nonsense about an agnostical atheist who believes angels are real. Heck, I not only believe in angels, I am one.
The word itself comes from Biblical Greek where angelos was the word for messenger. And because the pre-twelfth century translators of the Bible looked at the “el” part and thought of the Hebrew word that meant “God”, they used angel to mean a messenger from God.
Now, I am not being a sacrilegious atheist when I claim to be an angel. That is mainly because I am not technically an atheist. I do believe that a spiritual creative essence informs the universe, but I am actually an agnostic because that means I actually don’t know anything “A” for “not” and “gnostic” for “a know-er of stuff”. I am a teleological idiot because I actually don’t know anything about anything. But I do have the ability to look at evidence, weigh it, and reach a logical conclusion about what is most probably true, and I firmly believe in that only until more evidence comes along. I believe that particular thinking process is what is known as science (at least until better evidence comes along). So, scientifically considering the issue, I stupidly believe I am an angel. I bring possible knowledge from God.
Grandma Beyer used to have a picture like this in sepia tones on her bedroom wall in Mason City. I studied that guardian angel picture for hours as a child.
Thinking about stuff hard enough gives you insight, at least if you don’t over-heat your brain with hard thinking and catch your hair on fire. A lot of stuff has been happening that I have been thinking hard about. Here are some examples.
Donald Trump is proving to be a really epically bad president.
There are multiple really epically bad hurricanes forming one after another in the Atlantic.
The spell-checker on WordPress hates how I spell epically.
A monster earthquake hit Mexico.
The Bible has this book in it called Revelations that calls for bad weather and earthquakes and a battle called Armageddon that will bring an end to everything.
Kim Jong Un is an epically bad leader in North Korea who has nukes.
It is easy to see where the unavoidable conclusion is headed in angelic “message from God” terms.
Satan was an angel too.
So, as an angel, here is what I believe God is saying;
“As human beings, we all need to learn to love one another more. Love is the only answer that cures hate.” – God (No, really, he said this to me!)
Seriously. We need to take the weather anomalies as a sign that the time for climate change denial is long over. We need to work together with all people on the planet to lovingly change those things we do that have caused the crisis. We need to lovingly make peace with North Korea. Fighting them will only lead to the Biblical ending of the story coming to pass. I have an anomalous agnostical faith that there is a lot of truth in the Christian Bible. (The spell checker doesn’t like “agnostical” either.) Loving other people besides ourselves and the people who know and love us is the only possible solution to the problems before us.
Of course, I am saying all this angelic crappola tongue-in-cheekbecause I am, after all, a humorist, and I agnostically don’t know anything at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say.
A new day dawns. It leaves me wondering. Who am I today? Who will I be tomorrow?
The opportunity to have any sort of control over who and what I am is coming to a close. I don’t really know how much longer I have before pain and illness dissolve me into nothingness. But death is not the end of existence. I may be forgotten totally by the day after next Thursday, but my existence will still have become a permanent fact. Yes, I am one of those dopey-derfy-think-too-much types known as an existentialist.
I am feeling ill again. Any time that happens may be the last time. But that doesn’t worry me.
The important thing is that the dance continues. It doesn’t matter who the dancers are, or who supplies the music.
We can be clowns if we choose to be.
We can safely be fools if we really can’t help it.
An awful lot of awful things go into who and what we are. Those things make us full of awe. They make us awesome. Aw, shucks. What an awful thing to say.
But what is all this stuff and nonsense really about today?
It’s just Mickey being Mickey… Mickey for another day.
It’s not really poetry. It certainly isn’t wisdom. It’s a little bit funny, and only mildly depressing… for a change.
It’s just Mickey being Mickey. And a partially Paffooney gallery.
I am working on the end of my sci-fi comedy novel, Stardusters and Space Lizards. It is about an alien world that is dying from too much warfare and ignoring of pollution-created climate change. So today, after personally declaring war on the Trumpinator yesterday, I want to talk about politics. Not Earth politics. Alien politics. Any resemblance to real-world politics will be coincidental, or the result of truth being far stranger than fiction.
Let’s be thoughtful for a moment and analyze the way politics works on an alien planet. The political world always seems to devolve into two sides. Remember, we are talking made-up alien worlds here. So let’s give the two sides completely made up names. Let’s call them Dumbocrats and Ratpublicans. They are nothing like we have here on Earth. These are aliens, remember, nothing like us.
On one side you have the party that is totally self-centered and cares more about business and profits and what the individual can gain from those than it does about anything else, even insignificant things like other alien people’s lives. These are the conservative, me-party folks who try to maximize benefits for themselves and the relatively small circle of alien people they care about and think of as their own. We’ll call them Ratpublicans, again, totally randomly, for no particular reason.
Then, on the other side, you have the selfless ones, the ones who are more interested in making everybody happy, an exercise in futility that invariably leaves no one happy in the long run. I mean, if you give everything away to help others, eventually you are left with nothing. It is the reason liberal alien people often starve to death. It is also the reason that these selfless beings get so used to being poor and having nothing of their own. We’ll call them Dumbocrats, only because it is the name we have left over.
What always works best is when neither side gets everything they want. It is far better that the two sides grab the Enchilada of Happiness from opposite sides and pull with relatively equal force. That way it stays about in the middle and no one gets the whole enchilada. If the Ratpublicans get the whole thing, then the most powerful, ruthless, and evil among them will selfishly eat what they want and horde the rest, letting everyone else, even less-powerful Ratpublicans starve. If the Dumbocrats get the whole thing, they will give small bits to everyone, even the space rats and space pigeons, and visiting Space Goons from other planets, and no one will have as much as they want. Keeping the whole enchilada in the middle of the great political tug-of-war is the whole trick to making things stay balanced and under control.
If something throws the whole system out of balance, say an orange-headed alien in a gold-colored fright wig suddenly uses the magic of corrupt business practices to seize control of the Enchilada of Happiness, then the whole system starts to break down.
Now, you may have noticed already that instead of outer space aliens, I have used old movie clowns to illustrate this essay. I think it is entirely possible that the best people to listen to when it comes to the matter of politics and what to do about them are the clowns, the comedians, the mockers, and the fools. They have looked at the way things are with a keen eye to find what they can make fun of and make us laugh about. But because they are looking with a keen eye, often they are seeing the truth for what it is. Did you ever hear what Charlie Chaplin had to say?
Of course, we all know this whole discussion is about aliens on other planets. It doesn’t apply here. How could it? We are nothing like them. We’re smarter and better and have all the answers… if only we would take a moment to realize that we do.
My novel Catch a Falling Star is about an alien invasion that goes horribly wrong for the aliens. I wanted to make the story as realistic as possible, even though, admittedly, the story is really about people on Earth. The thing is, in order to supply realistic details to a story I had been working on for twenty-plus years, I started researching alien encounters with a certain gleeful seriousness, being a Carl Saganite who didn’t believe anything that was not provable and was always open to finding proof.
The thing about the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory and alien encounters is that the Wonderland on the other end contains proof of all sorts, for and against, with varying degrees of veracity. And if you follow the white rabbit of truthiness far enough, you are definitely going to find out things that, at the start of it all, you really did not want to know. There is a big downside to being way too smart for your own good.
Here’s a bit of validated conclusion on my part that will probably disturb you if you have seen even half as many fake alien videos on YouTube as I have. Skinny Bob is real. If you are immediately disgusted with how foolish and easily fooled you think I am after that statement, actually watch both videos all the way to the end so you can follow how I made this remarkably stupid conclusion.
The first video comes from an amateur researcher who is part of the MUFON community and spends lots of time working on uncovering and disclosing the truth because he is compelled, not because he is making money. He reveals that the leakers of this particular item of film property have gone about it in a way that protects their own secrets and has not led to making a lot of money. In fact, they distributed the video in a way that guarantees that governmental forces can’t easily erase it from being seen, copied, and studied. Still, as Nick Pope, the former British government UFO researcher, has stated about the Skinny Bob videos, they could simply be someone’s attempt to spend time and resources pulling off a masterful hoax in CGI and film-craft. Some people do live to fool other people. That’s where the second video really blows a hole in the white rabbit’s head. If you watched the very last bit about the frame rate, you can see that the leaked footage was intentionally reduced in frame rate from 18 frames per second to 12. Because I am an animation nut, I already knew that film in the present day tends to be 24 to 26 frames per second. Not only did the frame rate of the film suggest it comes from before 1975, but that someone had altered it for their own reasons to change how it would look. I immediately thought, “Aha! This will prove it is fake and the alteration was made to make the footage look more real.” But the restored footage doesn’t look less real. In fact, if anything, the footage looks even less like a robot or CGI program image. Why would someone want to make a video look less real? We can now cook and eat that old white rabbit.
And so, the inevitable conclusion. Once again the fact that so much effort has gone into suppressing and covering up these things proves that they are almost certainly true. You don’t make an effort to cover up a total fiction. Skinny Bob is real. And there is more to the story. And, dang me, I want to know.
Another opportunity to visit the nudist park has passed without me being able to seize the day and do what I really wanted to do this weekend. It was, however, a different set of reasons than last time. Last time I was determined to go on a Saturday when more nudists would actually be present. I got sick and it rained that Saturday. So I set my sights on Labor Day weekend.
This weekend the hurricane that ravaged Houston changed my plans. You see, the storm also ravaged Port Arthur and the distribution points that local gas stations rely on for new shipments on a weekly basis. I did not see the gas shortage coming in time. The lines at gas stations and two hour waits for gas mostly all happened before I was ready to cope with it. So I was not prepared to make the trip when the time came. Gas stations are limited to selling chewing gum and promising that more gas would be available by the middle of next week.
Yes, the boy in the picture is me naked as I might’ve been in a more sylvan youth than the one I actually had.
So I am left to sit here in my bedroom studio in the nude writing this and listening to Dvorák’s Scherzo Capriccioso on YouTube.
A scherzo is, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for an essay like this one. Most of what I write are really scherziplay (or scherzi if I hadn’t goofed on that typo in the definition) if you analyze them closely. Sprightly and humorous idea flows (at least, they make me laugh) that wax thoughtful and slightly serious at certain points. This one, the capriccioso, the capricious and mercurial idea that I have somehow turned into a nudist, is my attempt to make sense of the nonsensical, the whims and flimsy that led me to be a naked old man.
You may have noticed in my artwork a tendency to associate nudity with childlike innocence. (At least, you should have noticed if I have any ability at all as a writer and artist to guide your perceptions.) There is no sense at the nudist park that it is about sexuality and impending orgies. Those things are completely against the rules and have no place among actual nudists. You go to a nudist park and it is just you and your towel for sitting on talking to a bunch of naked people who just as fat and old and saggy and baggy as you are, each with their own towels for sitting on. Nobody uses more than their first names, and more than that is not necessary. Nudists are more open and honest than most people you meet in social situations. They literally are not hiding anything. And I have discovered that I fit right in there. It seems like the most natural thing in the world.
Once I got past the initial embarrassment that anyone would feel in that new-nudist situation, I came to the conclusion that I have always been a nudist. Having been born a nudist, my parents and grandparents trained me not to be one, and being sexually assaulted at ten gave added horror to being naked around others that it took a lifetime to overcome. But naked is how we were created. There is a reason that Adam and Eve didn’t wear clothes in Eden.
I didn’t get to go back to the nudist park this holiday weekend. I will never convince my wife and kids to go with me either. In fact, I myself may never have another opportunity to go back there. But listening to Dvorak’s Scherzo has confirmed in me that I am a nudist and always have been. Sorry if I have frightened you with my naked ideas, but maybe you should listen to a scherzo naked and test whether you are one too.
Cool title, right? No? It needs a lot of further explanation? All right, here goes.
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos”—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Whether you prefer the stealer of Tesla inventions or the author of Frankenstein for invention quotes, you have to admit they are both right. Those of us who think creatively try with all our might and mind to take the wreckage life has given us and make something new. Preferably we make something that is good for us and improves our situation. But sometimes it turns out that it only makes matters worse and creates monsters of the mind.
When I was ten, I was sexually assaulted by a neighbor boy who was older and stronger and decidedly crueler than me. It split my world into pieces. I retreated into fantasy worlds and lived in my imagination far more than the real world. The monster in my memory was locked away in a tightly sealed forget-me box. I repressed the memory successfully until I was twenty-two. My creativity and inventiveness turned to fantasy art and fanciful fiction. I worked at having a good sense of humor, being a tough athlete on the high school football field, and trying to force people to accept me as the brainiac weird kid who always knew the answers in science class and could do practically anything except successfully talk to girls.
Surprisingly my greatest invention would turn out to be me. I reinvented myself.
I would’ve never believed when I was young that I was made to be a teacher. I lived inside my own head. How could I be a teacher and control a classroom and make people listen to the various shards of nonsense that I was completely full of? But, through gradual problem-solving, I learned to be an effective public speaker. I learned how to be an engaging presenter. I did a few magic tricks. I told more than a few jokes. Some of them were even funny. I learned how to put ideas in front of children in visual displays and organization charts. I learned how to teach people to read. And more than that, I learned how to teach people to learn.
I honestly don’t think I would’ve learned to do all of that if my childhood psyche hadn’t been broken and hidden away in brain boxes when I was ten. I might still have been an artist. But not the teacher and story-teller I ultimately became. Without the mountain to climb, a boy can never become a mountain-climber. Without a star to see and study, he can never be an astrophysicist. And without a brain filled with broken brain bits, a man can never learn how to put himself back together again, let alone teach others how to do it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men are no help with this endeavor.
Have I now explained my terribly tilted title? Does this help you see how I have sung the songs taught to me by the Mother of Invention? Probably not. I am a rather dense little goof and the work of making me into me is not yet finished. I crashed and burned again a couple of years ago when I had to retire from teaching. I had to invent myself again as something new. I am certainly not done hitting the metal work with a big black hammer. But, perhaps, you can see the tool-marks on this blog and learn something from it too.
Being retired for health reasons and unable to work, I would be dead already without my writing and art endeavors to fill my time and keep me sane. I can do some work, as proven by my attempts to patch and repair the swimming pool this summer. But my limitations drive me crazy, as proven by the fact that I did about half of the work on the pool wearing only sunscreen and a hat. My kids are not married yet, and two of them are still in high school, but they are not much interested in toys any more. And I don’t yet have grandkids to spoil. So when I go the Resale Store or Goodwill to shop for old toys, I am basically buying them for myself.
The Princess of the Korean Court Barbie was lying on the bargain shelf for $3.49. I bought the ceramic wishing well behind her for $5.00. So the bargain-hunting gene I inherited from Scotch ancestors was duly satisfied. But I had to do more with things like these than merely own them. Toys are for playing. And what does a 60-year-old man do with dolls when he is playing? Besides being a bit creepy, I mean? Well, this photo is the answer. I use my toys to create pictures and artwork.
Here’s a creation using the ceramic wishing well again. It is apparently, on closer inspection, actually a candle holder. But it serves to make my Walmart Clearance Sale Disney toys happy. Here you see the pony-brushing party held by Minnie Mouse with Daisy Duck and the gay snowman from Frozen.
Here you see the metal miniatures I got in a pack from Walmart as they visit the cardboard castle. Two of the lead figures on the ground are hand painted by me in days long ago. The entire cardboard castle was printed and glued on cardboard, cut out and put together entirely by me. Mickey, Minnie, Alice, Stitch, and Kermit are the metal miniatures not painted by me.
So, my days have not been overwhelmed by boredom and frustration and problems with city pool inspectors (he doesn’t even know about doing the repair work in the nude, so he can’t give me a ticket for that.) I have been filling my time with toys and creative play. I have been mostly a good boy… err… old man.
Imagination is always the place I go in times of trouble. I have a part of my silly old brain devoted to dancing the cartoon dance of the dundering doofus. It has to be there that I flee to and hide because problems and mistakes and guilt and pessimism are constantly building un-funny tiger-traps of gloom for me to rot at the bottom of. You combat the darkness with bright light. You combat hatred with love. You combat unhappiness with silly cartoonish imaginings. Well… maybe you don’t. But I do.
When reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons, I spent years admiring Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for its artistry and imaginative humor, believing it was about a kid who actually had a pet talking tiger. I didn’t get the notion that Hobbes was actually a toy tiger for the longest time. That’s because it was basically the story of my own boyhood. I had a stuffed tiger when I was small. He talked. He went on adventures with me. And he talked me into breaking stuff and getting into trouble with Mom and Dad. It was absolutely realistic to me.
I have always lived in my imagination. Few people see the world the way I view it. I have at least four imaginary children to go along with the three that everybody insists are real. There’s Radasha, the boy faun, my novel characters Tim Kellogg and Valerie Clarke, and the ghost dog that lurks around the house, especially at night. That plus Dorin, Henry, and the Princess (the three fake names that I use in this blog for my three real children).
Have you noticed how Watterson’s water-color backgrounds fade into white nothingness the way daydreams do? Calvin and Hobbes were always a cartoon about turning the unreal into the real, turning ideas upside down and looking at them through the filter-glasses of Spaceman Spiff.
Unique and wonderful solutions to life’s problems can come about that way. I mean, I can’t actually use a bloggular raygun to vaporize city pool inspectors, but I can put ideas together in unusual ways to overcome challenges. I almost got the pool running again by problem-solving and repairing cracks myself.
So, I am now facing the tasks of working out a chapter 13 bankruptcy and having a swimming pool removed. The Princess will need to be driven to and from school each day. I will need to help Henry find another after-school job. And the cool thing is, my imaginary friends will all be along for the ride. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Hobbes. You made it all possible. So, please, keep dancing the dance of the dundering doofus.
On a sleepy summer Sunday it is only natural to think thoughts about God. And I have to include Jesus and Christianity in all of that meditation. After all, as a boy I attended Sunday school on Sunday morning in the Rowan Methodist Church and then would attend the Sunday service with my mother and father, brother, and two sisters. We would sing songs from the Methodist hymnal.
But here’s the kicker. Over time I have studied and learned science, how the world really works, and how people really act. I have noticed that most of the most intelligent writers, scientists, and thinkers are atheists and agnostics. I have had to make my peace with these things;
There is no life after death.
Jesus may not have been a real person.
If he was real, he had very little in common with the Jesus we worship.
Jesus doesn’t need to be real to have value in my life.
There is no white-haired old man sitting on a throne in heaven.
There is no heaven.
If there is no heaven, then there certainly is no hell.
We are all connected… even those of us who don’t live on this planet, in this galaxy.
So I guess, that makes me an atheist who believes in the existence of God. And because of this moronic oxymoron, my thesis now has to be; Even atheists have a need for religion.
Saint Raphael
Yes, when it comes to religion, I am an idiot. Just like all the rest of you are. Mark Twain once said something like, “Religion is the firmly held belief in what you know ain’t so.” That misquote, of course, is taken entirely on faith from a vague memory of a passage in the short story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”
Of course, I am not saying that I find no value in religion. I was associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses for almost twenty years because that was the religion my wife clings to. They are a Bible-based religion with a strict literalist interpretation of scripture who are expecting the end of the world, this “wicked system of things” at any moment now and go around knocking on doors and giving away free Bible literature with their own Truth professionally printed to save as many of the unbelievers as possible. Don’t get me wrong. I have never really fully accepted what they believe. But I have freely participated. Their belief system makes them some of the most loving, self-sacrificing people you could ever meet. They are non-violent and believe in helping everybody no matter how far they have to bend over backwards to do it. There are very good things in the Bible about living a moral life that are absolutely true and will make you and your children into better people. But here’s the most important thing about living that kind of life. If you are doing it for the promised rewards of eternal life, then you are doing it wrong. The goodness you do in this life and the love you both give and receive is the only heaven there is. Hardship taken on as a sacrifice to a loving God gets you nothing but the feeling that you have done the right thing. But let me assure you, that feeling is a treasure greater than fine gold. That mental state you create for yourself is the whole point and purpose of religion.
I do realize that liars are the people most likely to say, “Believe me…” before telling you something is true, but believe me, I don’t expect you to accept my cold clinical dissection of what religion is in my world view. I want you to believe whatever you believe is true about Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, or Budda… or nirvana or existentialism or science. I accept you and love you for who you are. The important thing is that we are all connected. Most religions make us nicer to each other and make us more loving and kind, as long as we are not allowing ourselves to fall victim to the dark side that exists in every religion. When your religion tells you to hate something, especially when it tells you to do something to punish that something you hate, especially especially if that something you hate is another person of some kind, then that’s where Eve is biting the apple, that’s where all the trouble starts.
Don’t let atheists tell you they don’t believe in anything. I hear Neal DeGrasse Tyson talk about being made of star stuff and teach about the connections we have with everything in the universe. Listen to him yourself on Cosmos talking about the wonders of science and the human quest to know, and tell me if you don’t hear hymns to God in his reverent explanations. He just knows God in a different form than you do.
So here is my humble conclusion on a sleepy summer Sunday morning when my meditations drift back to a boyhood of telling Jesus jokes in the down-time during Sunday school. I am an atheist who believes in a loving God. And even atheists need God in their life.
![LoveOnTheLookOutBouguereau[1]](https://i0.wp.com/catchafallingstarbook.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/loveonthelookoutbouguereau1.jpg?w=172&h=265&ssl=1 "LoveOnTheLookOutBouguereau[1]")
Catch a Falling Star 
Angel Thinking
Yes, you are about to read more Mickian nonsense about an agnostical atheist who believes angels are real. Heck, I not only believe in angels, I am one.
The word itself comes from Biblical Greek where angelos was the word for messenger. And because the pre-twelfth century translators of the Bible looked at the “el” part and thought of the Hebrew word that meant “God”, they used angel to mean a messenger from God.
Now, I am not being a sacrilegious atheist when I claim to be an angel. That is mainly because I am not technically an atheist. I do believe that a spiritual creative essence informs the universe, but I am actually an agnostic because that means I actually don’t know anything “A” for “not” and “gnostic” for “a know-er of stuff”. I am a teleological idiot because I actually don’t know anything about anything. But I do have the ability to look at evidence, weigh it, and reach a logical conclusion about what is most probably true, and I firmly believe in that only until more evidence comes along. I believe that particular thinking process is what is known as science (at least until better evidence comes along). So, scientifically considering the issue, I stupidly believe I am an angel. I bring possible knowledge from God.
Grandma Beyer used to have a picture like this in sepia tones on her bedroom wall in Mason City. I studied that guardian angel picture for hours as a child.
Thinking about stuff hard enough gives you insight, at least if you don’t over-heat your brain with hard thinking and catch your hair on fire. A lot of stuff has been happening that I have been thinking hard about. Here are some examples.
So, as an angel, here is what I believe God is saying;
“As human beings, we all need to learn to love one another more. Love is the only answer that cures hate.” – God (No, really, he said this to me!)
Seriously. We need to take the weather anomalies as a sign that the time for climate change denial is long over. We need to work together with all people on the planet to lovingly change those things we do that have caused the crisis. We need to lovingly make peace with North Korea. Fighting them will only lead to the Biblical ending of the story coming to pass. I have an anomalous agnostical faith that there is a lot of truth in the Christian Bible. (The spell checker doesn’t like “agnostical” either.) Loving other people besides ourselves and the people who know and love us is the only possible solution to the problems before us.
Of course, I am saying all this angelic crappola tongue-in-cheek because I am, after all, a humorist, and I agnostically don’t know anything at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say.
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